When I taught English in China, we were in a filthy, rat-infested village, crawling with giant cockroaches and shrouded in a pervasive stench. The classrooms...

I love Easter so much that it is hard to write about it. I cry thinking about it. It is the most full of true joy, the most expressive of God’s mercy, the mo...

Flowery (Palm) Sunday began to be celebrated in Constantinople by the fifth century - a couple centuries after it began in Jerusalem and a couple centuries b...

I have often heard or seen Dostoevsky quoted, “Beauty will save the world.” It is attributed to him as if it were his personal conviction, but it is importan...

Several years ago, after very emotional struggles with infertility and two heartbreaking miscarriages, we began our first adoption. It was a complicated affa...

In our family, we have four very intense children, two adopted with trauma histories, one with secondary trauma, one with a missing corpus callosum (the cent...

I have a hard time relating to the saints who knew they were going to be nuns from the time they were six - those saints who wanted to do nothing but pray, e...

The feast of the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple (2 February) is one of the Twelve Major Feast Days in the Eastern Church, also known as the Purificat...

Two intensive weeks of art camps have come to an end, and I am thankful for the experience. I kept enrollment to four students per camp so that I could focus...

I have just returned from a beautiful, powerful, intense experience where art and prayer were indistinguishable. I have come away with a deep appreciation fo...

Today in our third Tuesday of elementary art camp, we read Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters, an African fairytale about a prince who transforms himself into a sn...

I love this quiet, mid-week feast day celebrating Christ's rising up to Heaven in His resurrected body. He leaves us with the commission to carry on, to shar...

St. George is a popular saint, renowned for slaying a dragon and saving a princess. He is venerated as a vanquisher of evil and knight of justice, which is a...

The first time I met Babushka, my friend Ira’s 76 year old grandmother, she appeared as a tiny speck in a row boat across the water. As she drew closer, I ma...

When I was living in St. Petersburg, I rented a small, airy room in a sunny, high-ceilinged apartment on the corner of Dostoevsky Street and Candle Lane. I l...

Pascha is my favorite time of the year! I love the joy of this season, the hope of rebirth and resurrection! We celebrate this day with our Church family, be...

In these times, in our country, many women live isolated lives. Mothers feel societal pressure to do everything themselves - the cooking, the cleaning, the h...